December 9 Meeting: The speaker was Katie Hale from the Cargill Feed Department. Cargill has grown from a small town grain storage facility in Iowa in 1865 to a global corporation today with over 139,000 employees. Katie described some of the testing, processing and separating steps that take place at the Dayton corn milling facility. A wide variety of products are produced, from corn syrup and sweeteners, to pet foods, utilizing nearly 100% of the raw corn. A Cargill process called Empyreal provides a unique natural source of high protein pet food. Katie also showed some samples of the corn byproducts that result from the processing at the Cargill Corn Milling plant.

Katie Hale receiving a certificate of thanks from President Alan

Christmas Sharing Reminder: The Denny Mantel Christmas Sharing project is set for Saturday, December 13. Members and volunteers will meet at the Kroger store on Needmore Road at 10:30 AM to buy groceries to distribute to some needy families. (CLICK HERE for the Christmas Sharing page under "Activities" - an event flyer can be downloaded from that page). After the groceries are delivered, club members and volunteers are invited to meet at The Shiloh Grille, 5515 N. Main St., for lunch and post event socializing, beginning around Noon.(Editor's note: the event was held as scheduled on Dec. 13, and a report can be seen on the Christmas Sharing page under activites/christmas-sharing.htmland a photo slide show on/christmas-sharing-photos-2014.html).

• December 13 (Saturday): Denny Mantel Christmas Sharing Project• December 16: Speaker - Tom Byrne, Cargill Environmental Department• December 23: Club Christmas Meeting• December 30: NO MEETING, Holiday break• January 6: Open - program to be announced• January 13: Speaker - Tom Nichols, Dayton Dragons• January 20: Open - program to be announced• January 27: Open - program to be announced